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mchermyesterday at 10:33 AM2 repliesview on HN

I suspect actually MOST ancient traditions ban usury (or ban lending altogether). Christianity banned usury, Islam banned essentially all lending, Hinduism banned some casts from lending and regulated the lending of others[1].

I think the practice was found to be corrosive to societies and thus at one point or another many of them tried to ban it. (Lending is also very helpful for commerce, so most societies also reintroduced it. Actual practice varied at different points in history.)

1. https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe14/sbe1405.htm


Replies

groosyesterday at 7:10 PM

All Abrahamic faiths ban lending where the returned amount is greater than that borrowed, i.e. charging interest. Judaism "worked around" it by banning it amongs Jews but allowed lending on interest to non-Jews. Christianity originally followed Jewish law in this regard but abandoned it later on. Islam, adheres to banning interest strictly, but this is subject to different interpretations. E.g., buying an item at a higher price but paying in installments is allowed by some schools of jurisprudence, while others disallow it, while there is unanimous condemnation of a loan whose interest "doubles and redoubles" [explicit in the Quran], which is the typical credit card or mortgage. The main difference in buying at a higher price + installments from a conventional interest based lone is that the profit gets agreed to at sale, and it holds regardless of whether the full payment is made early or not.

Muslims have got around the problem of not being able to pay for houses in cash by constructing a joint ownership scheme, where the lender and buyer enter into a joint ownership of the house; the buyer pays rent and adds extra to buy more equity, and the rent goes to both the buyer and lender in proportion to their equity as a business partnership. Over time, the rent part decreases and the equity buying accelerates. There are other models, but this is the most popular one. Due to Federal and state laws, such mortgages are often reported with interest rates even though, technically, interest is not being charged.

scarface_74yesterday at 11:15 AM

If you look up the various means of buying home without having all of the money up front that are compliant, it’s just a mortgage by different name.

https://www.guidanceresidential.com/resources/faith-based-fi...